reality
by Karma Hunter
Summary: A stream of consciousness interlude from my novelization of FFVII. I made it pretty quick. R&R if you dare!!!


Disclaimer: All rights to Final Fantasy 7, all respective parties, and virtually anything I write about even remotely related to said topics are copyright of Squaresoft. :(  
  
Final Fantasy VII: reality  
  
reality..heh.  
  
who says reality is any more than what is perceived? or any more than just what others perceive of you?  
  
hmmm..i'm not usually this drearily complicated.  
  
or am i?  
  
who am i?  
  
what number am i?  
  
yeah, i know. i should have stopped asking that question a long time ago. i don't have a number. i'm no clone of the one-winged angel.  
  
sometimes i wish i had a number, though..  
  
strange..the world's saved and now everything's become so complicated.  
  
the woman who still lives yet..  
  
and the woman who died for us all..  
  
i can't understand it all.  
  
who am i?  
  
i am the man that two women loved with all their hearts. somehow, amidst that, i can see that through all of the fog and pain of the night that came from my descent.  
  
but though i remain one man, i still am two people.  
  
i still feel zack, his life, coursing through my body.  
  
tifa never paid attention to me until i became him.  
  
and aeris only came with me because she thought i was him.  
  
but aeris said she wanted to meet the real me..  
  
and tifa says that she loves me now..  
  
but what about me?  
  
who am i?  
  
the boy inside me loves tifa. but she never seemed to care for him. she loved the powerful soldier, the man she looked for in the papers while the child she always ignored wanted to become him. she never spoke up, never told him the truth about the past because she was afraid of losing him, losing him to the boy that was screaming with his own love and his own reality. his didn't coincide with hers..  
  
and to top it off, that man just happened to be aeris' old love. yeah, she never said that, but it was pretty evident. why else get mixed up with me? but she wanted to have the boy, the person who spent life growing up pining for and saving his childhood love, the one whose heart was captured.  
  
so..  
  
who am i?  
  
am i cloud of nibelheim? the cloud who pined away for his whole life to just be noticed by a woman whose self-involvedness kept any love from blossoming? the cloud who was then discovered by another woman who seemed to care for him more than any one?  
  
or am i cloud of zack? the cloud whose cockiness, callousness, and arrogance as well as his charm, confidence and skill garnered him the love from a woman who had loved him before he had been created, loved the soldier created from the boy she had ignored. the cloud who knew and loved a woman who knew in turn that he wasn't real?  
  
oh planet, who am i?  
  
tifa saw all of me in the stream of life.  
  
so did aeris-she couldn't help that.  
  
cloud of nibelheim..  
  
cloud of zack..  
  
and the man that they both created.  
  
i am two people, planet. two people who love two women. and those two love the opposites of them in return.  
  
opposites attract..funny.  
  
goddamn all to hell and heaven.  
  
why can't i be both?  
  
can't i be the soldier and still love tifa?  
  
can't i be the boy and still love aeris?  
  
ha..  
  
one would think Death would have narrowed the choices for me..  
  
not so.  
  
never so.  
  
never simple...  
  
that's just my life-being fucked around day and night, changing personalities at whim and not being able to choose who i want to be. Death never seems to ever make a difference for me.  
  
it didn't matter when the one-winged angel died, did it?  
  
it depends on your sense of reality. sense of perception. people live and die every day for no other good reason than because that is the way things happen. in the scheme of things, it shouldn't make a difference. it does to me, though..  
  
but, ultimately, tifa is dead, too. fifty, seventy, even one hundred years she may live, and she will not outlive me by a fraction of a lifespan. my body will still stubbornly go on, caged by the cells that have enslaved me, wondering as both have passed when I will.  
  
lucrecia has not died. the lifestream will not take her. nor me. the jenova will continue to remain, eating away at me as i die from living so long.  
  
the one-winged angel has its ultimate revenge. it died while i still live.  
  
i am two men, bound to earth by the cruelty of fate, unable to choose, unable to love. and so i still try as further punishment.  
  
tifa?  
  
aeris..?  
  
please..  
  
let me know who i love, let my life not be ruled by indecision.  
  
i'm standing right here at the edge of the world. i see blue holy, red meteor, green lifestream.  
  
metaphor? one learns to discount them after one hundred or so years.  
  
i want one love. One!  
  
let me love..  
  
let me live..  
  
i dive back into the stream of life to choose my reality again.  
  
perception is reality.  
  
attitude is perception.  
  
past is attitude.  
  
change my past..  
  
Hi, everyone. I just wanted to come out with something that reflected the way I feel about the whole love triangle thing. I used to be a big time Cloud/Tifa forever guy, but after playing the game again a few years later, I could sense some real intricacies of emotion. Now, I know these subjects are toxic, and this is much more different from my FFVII novelization, so I'm expecting some less than flattering e-mails/reviews. Oh, and I'm taking a typing class, so the updates can only be sooner. Expect my chapter bundle imminently soon, followed by a bundle update once a week for my novel (what a shameless plug that was). Hoped you liked it! (read: didn't make you puke)  
  
Now and forever, I am StrifeSnake...  
  
sob! 


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